The debate about women's roles reflects
a more basic argument about the very nature
of women. In The Subjection of Women (NAEL
8, 2.1060–70), John Stuart Mill argues
that "what is now called the nature
of woman is eminently an artificial thing — the
result of forced repression in some directions,
unnatural stimulation in others." The
king, in Tennyson's The Princess, voices
a more traditional view:

Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey.

The king's relegation of woman to heart
and hearth reflects a belief that woman's
special nature fits her for her domestic
role, as described in Coventry Patmore's
poem The Angel in the House (NAEL
8, 2.1586–87).

John Ruskin's definition of the separate
characters of men and women in Sesame
and Lilies provides the foundation
from which he develops an idea of home as
a place of peace, where man could take shelter
from the anxieties and conflicts of modern
life. In Jane Eyre, on the other hand, Jane articulates
passionately the view that women are not
different from men, but need a field of action
much as their brothers do. In "Lady Travellers," Elizabeth Eastlake upholds the domestic virtues that are said to be natural to women, but shows their relevance to spheres of activity outside the home. It is interesting
to compare Ruskin's views to those of
Sarah Stickney Ellis (NAEL 8, 2.1583–85).
The frontispiece to Ellis's Women
of England represents in graphic form
the traditional view of women's and men's
characters that her popular guidebook articulates.
The great Victorian women writers, however,
represent women's aspirations in ways
much closer to Jane Eyre's plea. In a
passage from her Autobiography (NAEL
8, 2.1589–92), the novelist and political
philosopher Harriet Martineau describes her
exhilaration when her brother tells her to
devote herself to writing and "leave
it to other women to make shirts and darn
stockings." In the opening chapters
of The Mill on the Floss,
George Eliot portrays the difficulties young
Maggie Tulliver faces in seeking a way to
express her imagination and intelligence,
and in the poem Aurora Leigh (NAEL
8, 2.1092–1106), representing the life of
a woman poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
presents Aurora's ringing defense of
her right to be a poet.